Electronic systems and circuits have made a significant contribution towards the advancement of modern society and are utilized in a number of applications to achieve advantageous results. Numerous electronic technologies such as digital computers, calculators, audio devices, video equipment, and telephone systems have facilitated increased productivity and reduced costs in analyzing and communicating data, ideas and trends in most areas of business, science, education and entertainment. Frequently, electronic systems designed to provide these advantageous results are realized through the leveraged utilization of centralized resources by distributed network nodes. These centralized resources can consume a significant amount of power and changes in power prices can have significant impacts on the overall cost of operating the centralized resources.
Centralizing certain resources within a distributed network typically provides desirable benefits. Clients interested in engaging a host to provide centralized resources and services typically have a desire to avoid providing the infrastructure, operation and maintenance directly themselves. Managing and maintaining different types of rack equipment and numerous applications in a typical large and complicated centralized networked host resource environment for a variety of different clients raises many challenging operational issues. A typical hosting infrastructure usually involves a variety of support activities that can have a significant impact on the services provided and the cost of the service, such as costs associated with power consumption.
The manner in which centralized resources are operated is very importance. For example, fixed preset rack equipment operating levels are often assigned upon a perceived generic implementation without consideration of variations in economic conditions. The dynamic nature and high variability of power costs and other economic issues can have significant impacts on operation costs. Traditional approaches to changes in power pricing usually involve inflexible default power drops. For example, power is consumed on a constant basis without regard to power price changes. Limited attempts at manually adjusting the rack equipment usually require the operator to have extensive knowledge and understanding of unique features of each piece of equipment. The complexity and typical dynamic interaction of rack equipment tends to increase the probability of human error in making adjustments. In addition, there is usually very little notice of dynamic changes in power pricing and manual reaction techniques usually have difficulty accommodating processing activity with urgent timing requirements.